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The Upstate region of South Carolina was saved by foreign companies after the fall of its textile industry. Now, tariffs pose another round of uncertainty.
Reporting from Spartanburg, Union and Greenville, S.C.
April 12, 2025, 5:01 a.m. ET
In the 1970s, when the Upstate region of South Carolina was known as the textile capital of the world, Adolphus Jones would clock in for grueling summer shifts at one of the many mills in Union, his hometown.
Trains roared around him, transporting materials around the country. Chimney stacks on the red brick mills stretched dozens of feet high, like flag poles. This was textile country, and the cities of Union, Spartanburg and Greenville were at the heart of it.
By the end of the 1990s, automation and cheaper labor overseas took the industry away from the state. Union’s economy cratered, as did the most of the region’s. But leaving Sunday church service on a recent afternoon, Mr. Jones, now 71 and retired, scoffed at President Trump’s vision of an American manufacturing revival through tariffs. The mill work had paid little, Mr. Jones recalled, and upward mobility was nonexistent.
“The textile industry is dead,” he said, buttoning his wool suit made in Italy. “Why would you want to bring it back here? Truthfully, why would the younger generation want to work there?”
Does a former U.S. textile capital want the industry back?
Many of the old mills in Upstate South Carolina have burned down, or been repurposed or abandoned.
Since taking office, Mr. Trump has imposed and suspended tariffs on imports at breakneck speed, with the goal of forcing companies to bring manufacturing back to the United States. This week, he abruptly paused reciprocal tariffs for the next three months on some of America’s largest trading partners, dropping levels to a universal 10 percent, while exponentially raising tariffs on Chinese exports.
